


Three Mancs In A Boat

by redandgold



Series: banterville [4]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: Banter, Humor, M/M, NO ANGST ISN'T THAT INCREDIBLE, Road Trip, frogs and lowbrow humour tw, mentions of like a bunch of players as banter, this is why I can't write long fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-20
Updated: 2016-01-20
Packaged: 2018-05-15 03:41:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5769916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redandgold/pseuds/redandgold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You know how you bring out the best in everyone, Jamie,” Gary said, his eyes still closed. “Why do you think Thierry always wants you against his five-a-side? No one gives goals away like you do.” </p><p>Jamie huffed and folded his arms, glaring resolutely ahead and questioning why he had ever thought that getting into a car with three Mancs was a good idea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Mancs In A Boat

**Author's Note:**

> "Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need—a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.”  
>  _― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat_
> 
> [Essential watching before embarking upon journey](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-1MHYVNoog)

**07** 10

“Gaz. I think you should write a book.”

Scholesy was in the front seat only – _only_ – because he was the shortest and therefore offered the best view of the side mirror. All of them made Gary feel like punching the dashboard with his face, so he figured he might as well put up with the evil that was least likely to crash the car. He was steadily coming to regret that decision.

“Gaz. Ask me why I think you should write a book.”

Gary grit his teeth and hoped that the joke would be quick and simple, like ripping off a plaster (except this was Scholesy, who for every one he ripped off stuck ten more on). “Fine. Why do you think I should write a book?”

“Because your ability to plan road trips to the point of incredible boredom should be shared with the world.”

There was a snort of laughter from the back seat and Gary levelled the two of them with a glare strong enough to see Jack Wilshire out for the rest of the season. “My road trips are _not_ boring,” he protested, shoving the Dossier – 375 pages of carefully-planned goodness – towards Scholesy, who seized the opportunity to prove that he could look even more disgusted with the world than he usually did. “Go on, Scholesy, read out all the interesting things we’re going to do. And read with enthusiasm, will you? You sound like you’re about to fall asleep and die.”

“So totally appropriate, then.” Scholesy cleared his throat. “Right, lads. Listen to how interesting this corker is going to be. 1040 hours: toilet break at unpronounceable French name for four point seven minutes. Make sure Carra doesn’t take too long.”

Gary transferred his glare towards the ex-ginger while Jamie choked on his popcorn and had to be heimliched by Phil. Scholesy smiled at him like an angel, if angels were things you wanted to punch the lights out of.

“Not that,” Gary hissed, reaching down to flip the pages over. “Look, we’re going to see a Sewer Museum in Paris on the way back. Isn’t that cool?”

“I guess so,” Jamie piped up from the back, “if you’re a toilet.”

“Look, no one asked you to come.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Jamie performed a credible impression of Oliver Twist as he put his hand together and raised his eyes to the heavens. “Please, sir, I’ve got extra tickets to the Euros and I don’t have any friends, sir, will you come, sir?”

“I have friends!”

“Correction: you have people who prioritise free Euro tickets over the ordeal that is going on a road trip with you. And your brother, who isn’t allowed the luxury of choice.”

“A real luxury,” Phil echoed mournfully.

Gary was increasingly aware of the fact that he might end up getting arrested for throwing someone out of the window. “I just thought it’d be nice for us to take a break from work, you know?”

“Yes,” said Scholesy. “At a sewer museum.”

“Oh, shut up. There’s loads of other things in there. Now will you please just let me drive in peace? We’ve only got fifty minutes to get to unpronounceable French name before Carra needs to take a piss.”

“I thought taking the piss was what we were doing,” Jamie said, confused. If the Olympics gave out medals for self-restraint in the face of sheer stupidity, Gary would have won something with England after all. As it was, he studiously ignored all Scouse bastards in the vicinity and reached for the CD player.

Phil made a lunge for his arm before he could get there. “NOOOOOO,” he yelled in a tone more overdramatic than any given Star Trek: TOS episode (Jamie had insisted that he wouldn’t be dishing out the good-good unless Gary sat through it, a bargain Gary ended up realising wasn’t all that worth it). “Scholesy, stop him! He’s going to play fucking Abba again!”

“Does your mother know?” Scholesy asked snidely, before dissolving into a fit of giggles alongside Jamie. The Neville brothers were not amused.

“Okay, okay.” Jamie raised his hands in surrender. “We won’t laugh. After all, we have to thank you for the music.”

Phil’s protestations of ‘this is serious’ were drowned out by the sound of betrayal. Scholesy must have triggered his asthma again as he wheezed, “Hey, Gaz? You know the match we’re going to? What’s the name of the game?”

“Whatever it is,” said Jamie, his face a picture of gravity, “I can tell you one thing: the winner takes it all.”  

“I’m going to kill the lot of you,” Gary muttered, gripping the steering wheel rather harder than he should have (by which he meant he was glad he’d taken out insurance).

“Gaz, don’t be Paul Ince’s managerial career,” Scholesy chided him. “It’s just a joke, when all is said and done.”

The only redeeming thing, Gary thought as the Backseat Boys broke out into a chorus of ‘S.O.S.’, was that he was still getting what he’d wanted. Even though it was significantly more off-key.

 

**09** 25

It had taken five minutes in France for Phil to go ‘are we there yet?’ Five _minutes_. Jamie had started to say something about that being shorter than something or other of Gary’s, but what it was no one ever found out because Gary was very good at shutting people up.

“Is he still bleeding?” Gary asked presently, flicking his eyes towards the rear view mirror in a semblance of concern that belied sheer smugness.

“Christ, Gaz, how did Philip survive growing up with you?” Scholesy was busy stuffing an amount of tissue that had not been seen Gazza had needed a blubber into Jamie’s nose.

“I didn’t,” Phil muttered darkly. Gary reached over and smacked him with the Dossier, all 375 pages of carefully-planned goodness.

“It was for your own good,” he said primly. “Look how manly you ended up.”

“I wouldn’t call it manly,” Jamie pointed out through his battered nose. “Two weeks ago I caught him watching reruns of Strictly and crying when Anita Rani lost the dance-off.”

“She deserved to be in the final,” Phil snapped, welling up again.

A loud _bang_ (that, for once, wasn’t Jamie and Gary) interceded Phil before he could go on his well-rehearsed rant about everything that was wrong with popular television. Gary yelped and kicked at the brakes, while Phil grabbed the steering wheel and yanked it to the side, sending the car swerving to a halt. A consequent barrage of panicked screaming terribly unbecoming for 40-year-olds broke out.

“WHAT THE FUCK,” Scholesy was yelling, which to be fair was basically his daily conversation except a hundred decibels louder. “WHAT THE FUCK.”

 “I’M NOT FUCKING DYING,” Jamie bellowed into the seat in front of him. “THAT TWAT ED STILL OWES ME TWO QUID AND I AM NOT LETTING THAT GO.”

Gary had decided on screaming the name ‘PHILIP’ for as long as possible, while said Neville was busy whimpering ‘god if I get out of this I promise I will never ever touch paella again’. It was only after a good five minutes and some passing French drivers giving them a sign that presumably did not mean _je t'aime_ that they all calmed down and stared at each other.

“Must be a busted tire,” Scholesy muttered, kicking the door open and slinking out to have a look. “Yep. Back left. Flatter than my pulse watching United nowadays.”

It was just as well that Jamie’s unpronounceably French toilet break was only a few hundred metres away. Leaving Scholesy with the car (Phil’s suggestion that he ‘move his arse’ was met with the stony-faced hissy fit that only he could produce), Phil and Jamie trooped towards the rest stop while having to suffer Gary’s bragging about the unerring accuracy of his Dossier, all 375 pages of it.

“One more word and I’m changing my mind about which Neville I like more,” Jamie growled, to both of the Nevilles’ discomfort, although for markedly different reasons.

The owner was unquestionably French, and the three of them stood for a minute in silence trying to dredge up heavily-suppressed school memories. Phil opened his mouth first, only to have two hands clamp down on his face. “Oh no,” Gary hissed, dragging him backwards while leaving Jamie to butcher the language. “You are _not_ wanking on the beach again.”

Phil wisely understood the futility of arguing that he hadn’t actually wanked on the beach and that Google Translate had let him down and it wasn’t like Gary’s Spanish was all that much better. Watching Jamie’s treatment at the hands of his brother had led him to conclusively decide that getting his nose battered was not very high on his list of priorities.

One exchange of French more broken than ‘07-‘09 Gary later, they’d managed to drag the owner back to the car and get the tire fixed. Gary watched mournfully as his Euros disappeared into the ‘Unforeseen Cost’ column.

“Just for the record,” Phil said, “when I said I wouldn’t touch paella again, what I really meant was for the next twenty-four hours.”

 

**10** 58

Whoever had decided to put Phil and Scholesy together in the back seat had either not been fully aware of the implications or been on crack. “I’m glad we never brought up having kids,” Jamie said, turning to glance at the two of them, who were now fighting over some incredibly ugly bag that Phil apparently liked. “These are more than enough.”

“Eh. Carragher. Don’t be Jamie Redknapp in a Thomas Cook advertisement. Just because you’re fucking my best mate doesn’t give you free license to be a twat.”

“Don’t be so crass about it, Scholesy,” Gary snorted, before turning to Jamie. “He’s right, though.”

“I don’t need a license to be a twat.”

“True. You already have your birth certificate.”

“Fuck you, Neville.”

“Not now, Jamie, I’m driving.”

Just as Jamie was about to retort, Phil flung his arm out, dangling the bag away from Scholesy’s grip. “You’ll never get it!” he cried dramatically, causing Scholesy to pause mid-grapple and acquaint his palm with his face.

“Oh, for the love of – ” Gary grabbed the bag and tossed it out of the open window. Phil and Scholesy watched, overcome with what Gary assumed was misplaced horror and mourning for an object that had hardly been worth it. “Look, you interrupted prime banter time. You know that prime banter time is strictly off limits. Besides, it was just a fucking bag.”

“Yes,” Phil said slowly. “A bag with your Dossier in it, all 375 pages of well-planned goodness.”

 

**11** 00

People who thought they’d seen a highly-strung, borderline hysterical Gary Neville (anyone who had ever met Gary Neville) had never seen him desperately trying to turn a car around on a highway, sobbing ‘my baby’ while three other grown men feared for their lives.

 

**12** 13

“I’m hungry,” Gary announced. He’d spent the last hour sulking in the backseat ever since Jamie had gently explained the technical impossibility of performing a u-turn in one-way traffic, but stomachs spoke louder than (375 pages’ worth of) words, and his was growling.

“You’re always hungry,” Scholesy said, also having spent the last hour sulking in the backseat, although his was more a fact of life.   

“Okay, we’ll stop for lunch.” Jamie turned into a side road. “Still on schedule, Neville?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Gary sniped. “Ask a Parisian motorway.”

“I can’t believe you don’t keep online copies of these things. Even Phil backs up his frog records.”

Gary gave Phil a look that only big brothers could give little brothers without getting walloped in the face. “You keep tabs on your _frogs_?”

“Okay, look, four of them died! Granted, now I have just the right number to name after Bake-Off winners, but still. I loved my duplicates.”

“Convenient, isn’t it?” Scholesy said in a tone that implied it was anything but. Gary wasn’t sure he liked the implications of that statement, and hoped for Phil’s sake that he never found out.

There was a little house up front that vaguely resembled a pub in Devon, and Jamie pulled up to it in the hopes that it would more concretely resemble a pub in Devon. “Right, you two kids stay in the car,” he said, ignoring the mutinous look on Phil’s face and the delighted look on Scholesy’s. “Come on, mum.”

“Why am I the mum?” Gary huffed, getting out nevertheless and snagging Jamie’s hand as they walked down the driveway to the door.

An old farmer greeted them with a brusque smattering of French that soon died down when he realized they were English. A weird exchange then proceeded to occur, with a Frenchman trying to speak English, a Scouser trying to speak English, and no one actually understanding each other.

“Jamie. Jamie look.” Gary nudged him in the back, directing his attention to the eye-watering platter of cheese that the Frenchman was resolutely defending. “There’s enough cheese to feed a fucking country in there. Surely we can have some of it?”

“Erm. Here.” Jamie grabbed a fistful of Euros and waved it around like Clint Eastwood. “Cheese, yes? Cheese.”

The Frenchman took the money far more eagerly than he should have done, then whipped out his phone and snapped a picture of two very surprised, mildly alarmed Englishmen.

“What?” Jamie spluttered after a moment.

“Cheese, yes?” the Frenchman said, smiling benignly at them. “Like picture. I take good picture. You have Bluetooth?”

 

**12** 26

“Well, that was unnecessary,” Gary grumbled as they trooped back to the car, having offered a considerable amount more for something they could actually eat. The stuffed croissants, however, smell delicious, and he might already have eaten one when Jamie had turned away for all of two seconds. It might have been very satisfying.

Jamie was fiddling with his phone, and Gary looked over his shoulder to see what he was doing. “W – oh my god. You can’t be serious.”

“He took good picture,” Jamie shrugged, slipping his phone – complete with new wallpaper – into his pocket. “Ten quid Scholesy somehow managed to nuke the car while Phil was badgering Stevie about the frogs.”

“No bet,” said Gary.

 

**13** 09

“Gaz. Ask your boyfriend what circles are.”

“Ask him yourself.”

“It’s funnier if I do this third person. Butty taught me. He calls it… butting in.”

Phil snorted rather louder than he should have. Gary frowned with disapproval, but turned to Jamie anyway. “Jamie, what are circles?”

“I dunno. Fucking shapes. What the fuck are you on, Scholes?”

“Don’t be Marouane Fellaini’s elbows within ten metres of an opponent, Carragher. ‘Circles’ are what you’ve been driving us in. That’s the sixth time we’ve passed that tree.”

Jamie slammed on the brakes and turned to glare at Scholesy. “It’s a fucking tree. They all look the same.”

“Actually,” Phil said helpfully, “it is. Note the distinctiveness of the branch structure and – ”

He was cut off by three variations of the phrase ‘shut up’ and refocussed unhappily on his chocolate bar. Gary squinted at the branch structure nevertheless.

“I think they’re right, Carra. Did Liverpool’s god-awful positioning somehow filter into your brain from too much association?”

“Fuck you, Neville.”

“I told you, Jamie, not now. What would Phil say?”

“Please don’t,” whimpered a man who had just been presented with a mental image of his personal theatre of nightmares.

“Anyway,” said Gary, “why don’t you turn on the Sat Nav? There’s a reason I paid for the sodding thing.”

“I can’t,” muttered Jamie. Scholesy raised an eyebrow, smelling blood.

“You can’t as in you’re too thick to understand how to use it, or you can’t as in you’re too thick to understand how to use it?”

“Gaz, will you please throw him out of the car?”

“Only joking, James, you know how much I love you.”

“Gaz, will you still please throw him out of the car?”

“Scholesy, stop bantering. And let’s compare one-liners later. Jamie, why can’t you turn on the Sat Nav?”

“It’s not working,” Jamie said helplessly, giving the GPS screen a slap for good measure. It fizzled, cracked, and settled into a sullen silence very familiar to one of them. “Gone to bits. No reception on the phones either. And there aren’t road signs for miles on these small sodding country roads.”

The four of them stared at the dashboard. “This is the worst trip _ever_ ,” Phil moaned.

“I had this covered in Contingency Plan 21-B in the Dossier, but it got thrown out the window.” Gary narrowed his eyes at Phil, who gasped in outrage.

“I wasn’t the one who threw it out!”

“You made me throw it out, same difference. I don’t give a fuck.”

“Actually,” Scholesy said helpfully, “I think you do.”

“And very well,” smirked Jamie.

The only consolation about small sodding country roads was that if you ever felt the need to murder three people, their bodies would never be found. “Shut up, all of you, and let me think.” Gary closed his eyes and frowned, the crease between his eyebrows getting steadily deeper until Jamie was fairly certain that he could mount an expedition in it.

“Maybe we can plug him in,” Jamie said, tilting his head at Scholesy, who gave him a look akin to that of a teacher at his worst, most pitiful student.

“Carragher, don’t be Diego Costa. My having a coincidentally relevant nickname does not translate to my ability to either a) interact with circuit boards or b) miraculously turn into a map that will atone for your inadequacies.”

“Fuck you, Scholes.”

“I don’t think Gaz would like that.”

Jamie turned to Gary, waving an exasperated hand in his face. “When did the ginger brat start talking so much? A couple years ago you wouldn’t have ever gotten more than two words out of him.”

“You know how you bring out the best in everyone, Jamie,” Gary said, his eyes still closed. “Why do you think Thierry always wants you playing against his five-a-side? No one gives goals away like you do.”

Jamie huffed and folded his arms, glaring resolutely ahead and questioning why he had ever thought that getting into a car with three Mancs was a good idea.

“Got it. It’s just past midday, right? That means the shadows should be pointing to the south, which is where we’re supposed to be going anyway. And the shadows are on our right, so we should just take the next right turn and follow that road without deviation till we get to civilisation. Or a map stand.”

Gary grinned at them, once again validated by his superior intellect. Jamie stared at him. “I could kiss you right now,” he said hoarsely.

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” said Scholesy, with the air of a man who had been through hell and lived to tell the tale.

Ignoring Scholesy, Jamie reached over and pulled Gary into one long, wet, sloppy kiss, much to the discomfort of the other occupants of the car.

“Just because we’re in France,” said Phil miserably, “doesn’t mean you have to get out the tongues.”

 

**15** 34

Things had been going smoothly for the last two hours; in fact they’d been going rather too smoothly, and Gary was starting to get worried again. Phil and Jamie had fallen asleep in the back, which significantly cut down the banter opportunities, and Scholesy had reverted to his usual tight-lipped self at the wheel. (“Are you sure you’re tall enough to see the road?” Gary had asked, only to be greeted with a version of Churchill gone NC-16 wrong.)

They’d finally burst onto the main road and were happily trundling along towards Marseille, bound to make it with time to spare before the game. Everything was quiet, everything was peaceful, and nothing explained the increasingly queasy feeling Gary had in his stomach.

“Carsickness,” Scholesy said succinctly when Gary brought it up. “Either that or your brain has finally caught on to the irrationality of you dating a Scouser and is making you suffer for your transgressions.”

It was more than carsickness, though; it was uneasiness, and as Gary’s ears (fine-tuned by many, many years of picking out the amazing diversity in abusive words from the Kop) heard a muted _brrrr_ coming from the boot, he knew he had found the source.  

“D’you hear that?” he whispered with a muted panic, pawing at Scholesy’s arm.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Scholesy muttered, but as the _brrrr_ ing continued, even he got a bit nervous. “Is that coming from us?”

“From the boot,” Gary nodded, reaching over to shake Jamie awake. The Scouser stirred briefly, realised that the Neville sleeping contentedly in his lap was the wrong Neville, and dropped him like a hot potato. Phil mumbled and went on sleeping, completely oblivious to how grating snoring like a chainsaw could be.

Scholesy took the car to the shoulder of the road and stopped, and the three of them cautiously got out to gather around the back. “What d’you think it is?” Scholesy asked, studiously ignoring the way that Gary and Jamie were all but clinging to each other like a couple of drowning cats.

“What if it’s a dead body?” Jamie whispered.

“Don’t be Arsenal’s champions league trophy cabinet, Carragher, dead bodies don’t make noises.”

“Okay, what if it’s an almost-dying body?”

“Why would we have something half-dead in the boot? Did you bring Liverpool’s title hopes with you, Jamie?” Gary asked in a valiant attempt to keep up the banter, even though he was about to freak out and call the police at any moment, hang international charges. 

The boot shuddered all of a sudden, and the three of them took a giant step back in horror.

“We’re going to fucking die,” Scholesy said, as if this was the most natural thing in the world. Sometimes Gary really, really hated how straightforward the little ginger bastard could get. Like an unembellished Christmas tree pleasantly greeting the wood chipper.

Phil yawned and stretched his arms out in the backseat, wondering groggily why the car seemed to be empty. A look out of the rear window offered an answer, although no semblance of understanding.

“Oi – what’re all of you doing out there – ”

Before he could finish, Gary had lunged forward and dragged him out of the car to join the circle (line) of protection (standing a little bit further away). “Don’t just stand there,” he hissed, “there might be a mass murderer in the boot, and as much as the weirder Neville wouldn’t be the greatest loss to the world, I’d rather you not die.”

Phil had gone very pale, and his failure to respond to the jibe was most uncharacteristic. “Philip,” Gary said slowly, “do you know what’s in there?”

Phil nodded, equally slowly.

“Oh my god,” said Scholesy, realisation dawning on him like sunrise on the day after the zombie apocalypse. “Don’t tell me – ”

Something triggered in Gary’s memory, and he gasped at Phil. “You did _not_ – ”

“What?” Jamie exploded, exceedingly annoyed at the round of Telepathic Manc that he had obviously not been invited to play. “What the fuck is in there?”

“Frogs,” said Phil through his fingers.

 

**15** 38

Having fended off a considerable number of questions (“Why did you bring them along?” “I needed to take care of them!” “Didn’t you leave them with Stevie?” “As if I’d leave them in the hands of that mad Scouse bastard!” “Oi, Neville, shut your mouth! How’s Stevie a mad bastard?” “He accused me of diving when I never!” “How d’we know you didn’t?” “Guys the FROGS”) Phil was finally allowed to open the boot. Four pairs of slightly disbelieving eyes stared with some trepidation at the plain white box that had been shoved to the side. Phil cautiously extricated the box from the various bags and opened it.

“Fuck,” he said.

“Actually,” Scholesy said.

They would later, with access to Google, discover that frogs liked to make _brrr_ ing noises when they mated. They would also discover that females could lay hundreds of eggs, to the extent of expanding whatever body of water they were in by 50%. Lastly, they would know that the male frog sometimes turned greyish-blue when mating, a completely natural process.

Right now, however, Phil knew nothing of this. All he saw was a half-asphyxiating male frog awash in a sea of what could only be politely described as goop, while the girls looked astoundingly unbothered. “EDD!” he cried, snatching the frog up into his hands and only putting him down after the perils of mouth-to-frog resuscitation had been yelled in his face.

“Look at that,” Jamie snorted as Ed (which was what everyone called him, just to listen to Phil say crossly ‘it’s DD!’ and giggle immaturely about it) hopped back into the box. “He’s gone all normal now. As normal as frogs get.”

“I can’t believe our mass murderer was a bunch of fucking frogs,” Gary shook his head. “In the most literal sense of the word.”

“Look, I had to bring them, all right? Blame Jamie, he’s the one who gave them to you in the first place.”

“Yeah, well, I thought you’d release them into the garden while the _Free Willy_ soundtrack played in the background. Not name them after people famous for winning a competition most likely to involve them by serving them in a pie.”

Phil covered Edd’s ears, aghast.

“FROGS DON’T HAVE EARS,” Jamie yelled, his voice going up two pitches. He stormed back to the car and slammed the door behind him. Gary gave Phil a reproachful look before rushing after him.

“I can’t believe he’s always picking a Scouser over me,” Phil said, scandalised. “Me! His own brother!”

“You know what they say,” Scholesy called over his shoulder as he returned to the wheel. “Blood might be thicker than water, but amphibian eggs just thin it the fuck out.”

 

**17** 12

Operating on the policy that ‘nothing else can possibly go wrong’, Jamie decided that he was going to ‘crank things up a bit’ in order to get them to the stadium on time. This, apparently, involved becoming the British Chuck Yeager. “Will you slow down?” Gary yelped, clinging on to his seatbelt for dear life. “What if the police catch us?”

“Then I’ll be sure not to stand so close to them,” Jamie retorted. “Apparently, they can hear every breath you take.”

“Jamie, mate. I hate to pass up the opportunity to take the piss out of Gaz, but don’t be the backpassing aspect of van Gaal’s philosophy. I’d rather not add getting arrested to my evergrowing list of reasons to hate the world.”

“I don’t know how United plays when Mancs obviously don’t have balls,” Jamie sneered at Scholesy, but slowed down nevertheless. Which was a nice surprise for the wailing police car that had just pulled up next to them; they didn’t get such kind drivers who pulled over without being told to do so every day. 

The Vauxhall was a medley of swear words and panicked prayers, all performed at noise levels known only to jet engines and babies at 3am when all you wanted was a good night’s sleep. Conversations at supersonic pitches and high speeds were rather hard to decipher, but this one went something like

“FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK.”

“OKAY EVERYBODY CALM DOWN.”

“I _TOLD_ YOU.”

“DON’T SLOW DOWN SO FAST MY FROGS.”

“WE’RE KIND OF WORRIED ABOUT ANOTHER KIND OF FROG AT THE MOMENT, PHILIP, NOW SHUT UP.”

“ _FUCK, FUCK, FUCK_ , _FUCK_.”

“JAMIE THAT IS NEITHER CALM NOR HELPING.”

“I DIDN’T BRING MY FUCKING LICENSE.”

The screaming ceased, only to be replaced by a synchronised sharp intake of breath as the car slowed to a halt. “Don’t look at me like that,” Jamie said, wringing his hands.

“Believe me, we’re not the only ones who’re going to be looking at you like that,” Scholesy said.

“Scholesy, shut up. Phil, give Jamie your license. You look a bit more like him than I do.”

“That’s like saying a penguin looks more like a grizzly bear than a pineapple,” whined Phil, digging out his license and passing it to Jamie.

“Jamie, your best, most annoying smile, please. Flirt with the officer if you must, but please don’t do it your normal way.”

“Oi, it won you over, didn’t it?”

“Rest assured, babe, it wasn’t the incredibly awful pickup lines you got from reddit that did the trick. I know what you’re going to say, Scholesy, shut up.”

The police officer was advancing steadily towards the driver’s seat, and Jamie twitched nervously. “Well, lads, I’d say it’s been nice knowing you, but it really hasn’t,” he muttered under his breath. “Donate all of my stuff to Liverpool, will you?”

“Why would they want all that crap?” Scholesy asked, before correcting himself. “Oh, I see. A ‘birds of the same feather’ thing?”

“ _Scholesy_.” Banter regarding Liverpool was welcome under most circumstances, except Gary having to spend his life savings on bailing out a Scouse bastard.

“Um. Hello, officer!” Jamie smiled as brightly as he could while the rest of them, in a strong display of solidarity, shrank back into the shadows and pretended not to exist. “That’s a lovely, er, uniform you’ve got there.”

The officer continued to stare at him. Jamie quailed.

“What’s it, uh, made of…? … Boyfriend material?”

“Please tell me he never used that line on you,” Phil whispered to Gary, whose curious position (muffling his frustration by chewing the hem of his shirt) gave him the answer.

“Feu arrière,” said the officer.

“Ohh, please don’t tell me that means £11000,” Jamie whispered, sweat dripping down the end of his nose.

“Feu arrière,” the officer repeated. “Your tail light. Broken.”

 

**18** 55

Scholesy had given the light a kick, which sorted it enough for the police to bid them farewell and to ‘enjoy the Euros’. They’d chuckled politely till the car was out of sight, at which point it turned into half howling, half crying, all hysteria.

“Oh, well,” Phil chirped, as only Phil could under the circumstances. “At least it’s not raining. That’s one good thing about France, isn’t it?”

“I give it two minutes,” Scholesy chirped, stuffing as much irony as was humanly possible into his tone of voice.

It took three. The sky gave an ominous rumble, shuddered, and unleashed the collective amount of tears that Michael Owen’s punditry had managed to generate over the years. This would not have been so bad under normal circumstances (a non-leaky car).

“Fuck off,” moaned Gary under abnormal circumstances (a leaky car).

Someone had obviously seen the wisdom in puncturing the roof with two or three holes, and the raindrops that managed to squeeze through were of such high velocity that, as they hit whichever poor unfortunate soul that was their target, they inadvertently ended up splashing the rest of them. Scholesy drew his knees into his chest, draped a raincoat over himself, and cut off all human contact as he rolled into a misanthropic ball.

“This is so not worth it,” Jamie muttered darkly. “We’re going through the road trip to hell to watch an _England game_. They’re going to lose the ball five times in the first minute, Rooney’s going to miss a penalty, and Jones’s own goal will provide the cap on a ‘shocking’ 3-0 defeat, only shocking because I can’t believe no one saw it coming.”

Phil hitched his jacket up to cover his head and chirped (though with considerably less conviction), “You never know, Jamie, we might just win. And the frogs are going to like this, at least!”

Jamie groaned and thumped his head into his seat. 

Gary reached for the CD player and grimly turned it on. If they were going to drown, they were going to drown while listening to Abba, and he did not give a damn how inappropriate _Waterloo_ was.

 

**19** 31

Thirteen hours, burst tires, 375 pages' worth of lost Dossier goodness, unnamed French roads, amphibian breeding, and non-Sting police later, four incredibly bedraggled, half-drowned, tired and starving men coasted gently into the carpark of the Stade Vélodrome. Gary turned off the engine and sighed, leaning back in his seat. “Fuck me,” he said.

“Not now, Gaz, I’m fucking exhausted.”

“Talk me out of planning road trips next time.”

“With much pleasure.” Jamie reached over and patted Gary’s hand kindly. “For what it’s worth, if it’d all gone to plan, I’m sure it would have been a blast.”

"Not as fun as taking a plane would have been," Scholesy pointed out.

Gary gave them a weary smile. “Right, then, let’s get in. Grab your valuables. Phil, that does not mean your frogs.”

They had snatched up their things and Gary was just locking the door when all four of them paused, coming to the same horrible realisation at the same horrible time.

“Don’t tell me,” Gary said, slumping over the car. “Who forgot to bring the tickets?”

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. This is my Happy Place AU where Gaz is back at Sky, Phil is back at BT, Gaz only has ONE JOB, Carraville are v together thank u muchly, and the four of them always hang out (w/o double dating)  
> \- Kind of continuation of [Partridge](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5474708)  
> 2\. Takes place on June 11, 2016; they set off at about 5 or 6 from London and it's supposed to take about 12 hours to get to Marseille, where England are playing Russia at 2000. I DID PROPER RESEARCH  
> 3\. Speaking of proper research:  
> \- Paris does have a sewer museum  
> \- Phil did tweet about ejaculating on the beach in Spanish  
> \- Stevie did accuse Phil of diving  
> \- Frogs do mate and turn blue and all of that crap  
> \- Frogs don't have ears (though they do have ear-holes or something??? idk I got freaked out by the pictures to continue looking)  
> \- Feu arrière does apparently mean tail light (and £11000 is apparently the fine for driving without a licence) (apparently French police like to do foreigners over)  
> 4\. Road trip playlist is basically Abba + a smidgen of the Psycho soundtrack when they're hanging out with presumed dead bodies  
> 5\. I'm sorry for Scholesy being such a little shit (no I'm not)  
> 6\. Trivia: if you look back you'll realise at no point does Phil drive  
> This is because he is the baby (EVEN THOUGH HE'S OLDER THAN JAMIE STILL NOT OVER IT)  
> 7\. Feel free to suggest banter improvements!! Particularly for Jamie I kno I'm biased and awful  
> LUFF U


End file.
